Bradford lass recently returned from living in Rome. Rediscovering Yorkshire, searching for a decent coffee.

Bring on the clowns, we give you …. Borisconi

As foreigners we love to laugh at Berlusconi. We raise our eyes to the ceiling, shrug our shoulders in disbelief that such a man could have won power in our beloved Italy. We mock and wonder how he continues to enjoy even the modicum of success which has prevented him being run out of town as a blighter and a scoundrel.

However inconceivable to us, he recently claimed that there would be, “a revolution” in Italy if he was sent to jail. We await this development with curiously scant interest and a raised eyebrow.

But we in England should not be so smug. We have Boris. Boris who brings the meaning of buffoonery to a whole new level.

Lord Mayor’s Appeal via Flickr.
Boris is the one on the left if you don’t know.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (this is his real name) the Conservative Mayor of London said recently, in a speech in praise of Margaret Thatcher, that greed is good and a valuable spur to economic activity. At least in Italy politicians would be deterred from espousing the ‘greed is good‘ doctrine due to Catholic sensibilities. Greed is not good, it’s a sin. Sadly lacking in such sentiments, Boris went on to say that with varying levels of IQ, inequalities of income will always naturally occur. Well actually I don’t know what he was trying to say, this is a quote taken from the speech.

“16% of our species have an IQ below 85 while about 2% have an IQ above 130 and the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top, for one reason or another boardroom greed or the natural god-given talents of senior executives, the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider…”

Hmmmmm. And this from an Eton/Oxford educated cornflake. Impressively articulate as always, he then went on a fail an IQ test live on radio.

Here are some of his other clangers:“As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is splashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers.”

“The UK economy has reached its Costa Concordia moment. After two years of parbuckling, I think you would agree that the keel is off the rocks and at last we can feel motion beneath.”

With these people in charge is it any wonder that people have little faith in our leaders? And who have we to save us? The Pope? Or perhaps hope rests with Matteo Renzi, the young Mayor of Florence who was recently elected leader of the PD. Regrettably described as the Tony Blair of Italy, does that mean we can look forward to a politician who says nothing other than change, modernisation and new in superficially varying combinations for years before anyone realises that he hasn’t said anything at all? The Blair approach is surely not what Italy needs.